Doyle:“Being a math guy, I always look at numbers. Strike percentages and ground-ball rates are things where, if you can get the odds in your favor, you’re going to be more successful. That’s what I do when I pitch. I try to get as many small edges as I can.“

A lot of people aren’t good at math, especially in baseball. People struggle in math, so coaches usually keep it simple. They just say, ‘We want first-pitch strikes and we want 1-2 counts versus 2-1 counts.’ They hammer that into us every spring training. Then, during the season, if we have a stretch where we’re falling behind hitters, they’ll step up and say, ‘Look guys, we’re doing a crappy job of getting ahead; we’re trying to be too cute and we’re trying to spin off too many breaking balls. We need to get back to basics and get ahead in the count.’

“Stats are always helpful, but there are some you don’t know how to change. You can’t change something like opponents‘-batting-average-on-balls-in-play. You look at it, and it’s helpful to know what it is, but at the same time you can’t really control how they hit the ball or what happens once they do. All you can do is throw the pitch. There are small alterations that you can make — small changes — but you can’t try to reinvent the wheel. You have to go with what you’ve been successful with, and for me that‘s been throwing strikes.”